Nicky Ryan will likely be taking an extended break from competing in professional grappling as he’s recently suffered a fully torn ACL that will almost certainly require surgery to fix. This will actually be the third knee surgery that Ryan has had to undergo in his young combat sports career, a shocking number at the age of 21. The most recent time that Ryan has had to go under the knife to help him deal with a knee injury was shortly after a match with Dante Leon at the Road to ADCC event, where he damaged the meniscus during a decision victory.
It’s roadblocks like this that have prevented Ryan from being more active in his grappling career and they’ve almost certainly slowed his development and progress due to time taken away from the training room. Despite having to overcome devastating injuries on more than one occasion, Ryan has still reached the very pinnacle of the sport several times over. Ryan first competed at the ADCC world championships all the way back in 2017 at the age of just 16 years old, although he came up short in the opening round against AJ Agazarm.
Ryan returned in 2019 and went one step further, defeating Shane Jamil Hill-Taylor in the first round before losing to the legendary Paulo Miyao shortly after. It was about a year after this great performance that Ryan was promoted to black belt in BJJ by John Danaher. He was primed to continue his improvements and turn in to one of the top grapplers on the planet but unfortunately the aforementioned injury meant that he had a difficult few years. In Ryan’s third appearance at the most recent ADCC world championships he went out in the opening round again, losing on points to Renato Canuto.
Nicky Ryan confirmed the news of his ACL injury that will soon require surgery in a live post to his official Instagram account, where he gave the following comment:
“Well looks like surgery number 3 is coming, hurt my knee 2 weeks ago and just got MRI report saying I’ve got a fully torn ACL”
